Institute for Violence Research and Prevention

Biographical Sketch

Maria Kefalas is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for Violence Research and Prevention. She earned her BA from Wellesley College in economics and her MA and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago. After completing a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania and teaching at Barnard College-Columbia University, she joined the faculty at Saint Joseph’s University.

She writes on a wide range of topics including family, community, culture, and class. Her books include Working-Class Heroes: Protecting Home, Community, and Nation in a Chicago Neighborhood (2003, University of California Press) and (with co-author Kathryn Edin) Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage (2005, University of California Press), recipient of the 2006 William J. Goode Book Award for the most outstanding contribution to family scholarship.

Currently, she serves as an Associate Member on the MacArthur Foundation’s Network on Adult Transitions. Based on research funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, her newest book with Patrick Carr, titled Hollowing out the Middle, describes how the most serious threat facing small-town America will be the loss of its most precious resource: young people. -book cover-  -book trailer-

Select Publications:

Carr, Patrick, and Maria Kefalas. 2009. Hollowing Out the Middle. Boston: Beacon Press.